


Tying Knots

by OverconfidentFanficWriter



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: Rebels
Genre: Fluff, Love, M/M, Marriage, Poetry, ptsd mention
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-08
Updated: 2016-08-08
Packaged: 2018-08-07 11:09:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 692
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7712593
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OverconfidentFanficWriter/pseuds/OverconfidentFanficWriter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Love isn't what it you imagined when you were 16. It's bumpy, constantly shifting, hard work to maintain, and worth every moment. Luke reflects on love after nearly 20 years of married life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tying Knots

**Author's Note:**

> The combination of a few Skybridger requests on Tumblr, a really good book, and listening to my elders when they told me what to expect out of love.

It seems like a lifetime ago when they said their vows, and longer still when they first realized that they were going down a path that Jedi didn't tread. There were a lot of mix-ups, a lot of false starts, work and friends and war weaving together to make obstacles Luke hadn't been sure he wanted torn down. Even the night before the wedding, a year after they'd truly committed to the relationship, Luke had felt almost sick. Love was scary. Love was dangerous. Love was this, love was that. Looking back on it now, it's almost foolish. The Luke of the past didn't know anything about love, not really.

Love is waking up before your husband and feeding his fifteen pets because yesterday was rough and he deserves to sleep, and a couple days later you wake up to the smell of jogan muffins that he got up early to make. Not because you've got a score to settle or you're competing. You forgot that years ago. It's because he's your husband.

Love is when tempers rise and you take a break to figure out what you want to say, and then you listen. You do your best, even when it's tough to bite back your pride. He's your husband and you love him and you trust him to tell you what bothers him and he trusts you to listen.

Love is that night at the opera where he takes you just because you once said you'd never been and he wears that dress that looks like the night sky and spends half the time fiddling with it because he'd never dreamed he'd wear anything so beautiful.

Love is when your husband tells you to go pet the dalgo, really, it's okay and then spends 10 minutes laughing himself sick when it chases you. 

Love is when you go quiet, when everything shatters and you have to leave, running out the door because there's too much and you need space right now and everything's painful and when your head finally clears he's right there in the kitchen waiting for you. Love is when you stumble through apologies and he tells you again and again that he doesn't care if the episodes are inconvenient or ugly or painful and you know he's telling the truth because in five days later it's you in that kitchen, fixing nysillin tea after he's had another nightmare.

Love is friendship, listening when you've had a bad day, joking over the same things, and knowing the other person hates blue milk with a passion. Love means calling out your husband when he's about to do something you know he'll regret, and listening when you're called out in turn.

Love was when the first sparks faded, when the rush of hormones he used to feel stopped, and that period of dread when he was uncertain if he'd even loved Ezra to begin with. And when he knows, with absolute certainty, that Ezra feels the same way. It's mired, obscure, a strange kind of death, the day all the little things that annoyed him pile up and they're all he sees.  
And it's a strange sort of rebirth the day they sit down, talk it out, and within a few months are in a new, better kind of love again.

Luke's been married nearly 20 years now, dreaming of different times when this would have been impossible.  
The Jedi had described love as a feeling, when in truth, love was a choice, one you made every day. Built on common values, on communication, on those little moments together. He would not sacrifice others for Ezra, and Ezra wouldn't do the same for him. They'd come too far to ignore what the other person wanted. Still, there's parts of Luke that realize he doesn't know enough of love, that wonder if the Jedi were right in banning something so unpredictable.  
And then he wakes up, turns over to see Ezra peacefully snoring, three or four animals curled around him, and offhandedly wonders what he can do for him that day. Just because.  
No, the Jedi didn't know much of love.


End file.
